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Leaving Traces

by on 15/10/2012

Twelve weeks ago I introduced my Year 3 students to 4 D’s. It’s a mash up of design (research) knowledge. And I should probably credit Gordon Pask, Milton Glaser, Ken Carbone and Luke Williams amongst others.

DESIGN
Unify: Know who you are and believe in your added value.
Simplify: Create a Clear, Concise, Compelling message.
Amplify: Work consistently and strategically to activate all touch points with your audience.

DISRUPT
Expectation
Gap
Value

DELIGHT
Sufficient variety to provide novelty.
Forms that can be interpreted at various levels of abstraction.
Cues to guide learning.
Responsive and engage the user in discourse.

DISSOLVE
Spread your message across a variety of different converging media platforms so it moulds itself in reaction to audience responses and changes in context.

Last Friday was Major Project hand in day for all Year 3 Graphic Design students at AUT. All fruits of 12 weeks labour were collected for moderation, marking and exhibition at the AD12 Art and Design Festival, 7–11 November.

Last year one of my students made a very special project. What originally started as a street style fashion index, turned into a typographic experiment in which every stage of concept and production came from a dialogic approach. The project did not solve any problem. Instead it addressed a potential. This strong design thinking found a partner in material thinking in which knowledge through making resulted in an extraordinary production.

The designer did not only develop a reversed calligraphic typeface in three weights, but also managed to apply it on a variety of mediums. She did not just ⌘P, but dared to go into a silk screen print experiment of which she did not know what the end result was going to be. Students who dare to discover new found land, pay very close attention to the moment and completely open their design process are probably amongst the best.

No emphasis was put on final products to so-called solve a problem, instead an original visual language arose from a heuristic model of experiments. Even at the very last stage she kept on experimenting with embossing inks. Nothing was left to a standard mode. The traces left by the urge to explore were not only awarded by my colleagues and me.

Ill/legible by Tamsin Fraser was awarded with a Golden Pin at the Best Awards last week.

Comments(1)

  1. Eden Potter
    5:21 pm, October 10 2012

    Thanks for sharing this, G. I think the ‘disrupt’ part of the 4Ds is one of the hardest parts of the design process to engineer, but is one which is likely to trigger ‘delight’. It’s like the order/chaos oppositional thing—you need to disrupt to create. Tamsin’s work disrupts expectation and creates delight.

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